by James Randi
Mr. Bishop would have us infer that he does not know how he does it. I know how I do it, and I am rather of the opinion that his self-consciousness [self-awareness] is not a great way behind my own. It is very difficult for me to believe that so expert a student of the sensations of other people should be so poor a pupil in his own case.
Bishop chided Montague for failing to recognize that “Almighty God” had given him his abilities, and questioned Montague's belief in a deity, as if that discredited his interference. But Montague was unfazed, proceeding to perform the Bishop act for many large audiences, always denying that any supernatural forces were at work.
After numerous marriages and bouts with alcohol and drugs and almost every excess available to him, Bishop died suddenly in New York at age thirty-three. His demise had a certain macabre mystery about it, since he had said that he was subject to cataleptic fits and might thus be buried alive if not carefully examined after his apparent passing. A dramatic “swoon” following his stage performance was not uncommon for him, and he claimed that several times he'd come close to being sliced up by doctors about to perform autopsies on his still-living body.
His mother, a rather overly dramatic, raving sort of woman who some years earlier had thrown herself into her husband's grave as he was being lowered to his final rest, made wild accusations in the press about her son having been autopsied while not yet dead, but nothing was proven. The event provided journalists with marvelous stories for decades and is still occasionally resurrected.
Black Art Principle
In conjuring this principle is used — for one thing — to produce the illusion of floating objects. It is done by covering supports and personnel in black material and operating against a black backdrop. The idea is said to have been developed and first used by illusionist Max Auzinger about 1875. The luminous trumpets, tambourines, and other objects used by some spiritualists during dark séances similarly appear to be floating due to the same optical effect. Dealers in supplies for spirit mediums sell a variety of devices to be used with this method.
See also Robert Nelson.
Black Arts
See black magic.
Black Boxes
See Abrams, Dr. Albert, De la Warr, George, and Drown, Ruth.
Blackburn and Smith
In 1882 the team of Douglas Blackburn and G. A. Smith were authenticated by the Society for Psychical Research for their amazing telepathic demonstrations. Smith, blindfolded and sometimes concealed under a blanket, was able to name words that had only been shown to Blackburn and could also reproduce drawings secretly shown to Blackburn. The “experts” embraced, at last, this most welcome and undeniable evidence that supernatural forces did indeed exist.
In 1908, the investigators all having died, and Blackburn believing that Smith had also died, he revealed the methods the pair had used to perform their trickery, a hoax that had
originated in the honest desire of two youths to show how easily men of scientific mind and training could be deceived when seeking for evidence in support of a theory they were wishful to establish.
Smith immediately showed up to complain and denied everything, but Blackburn was intent on telling the story. One example will serve to show how ingenious and original the team was. In the London Daily News of September 1, 1911, Blackburn explained how, with Smith covered in blankets, he had been able to transmit to him a drawing he'd been handed by one of the experimenters. Smith was to draw on a piece of paper he had with him in the dark under the blanket, the impression he'd “telepathically” received from Blackburn, who revealed to the News:
I also drew it, secretly, on a cigarette paper. . . . and had no difficulty while pacing the room collecting “rapport,” in transferring the cigarette paper to the tube of the brass projector on the pencil I was using. I conveyed to Smith the agreed signal that I was ready by stumbling against the edge of the thick rug near his chair.
Next instant he exclaimed: “I have it.” His right hand came from beneath the blanket, and he fumbled about the table, saying, according to arrangement: “Where's my pencil?”
Immediately I placed mine on the table. He took it . . . under the blanket. Smith had concealed up in his waistcoat one of those luminous painted slates which in the dense darkness gave sufficient light to show the figure when the almost transparent cigarette paper was laid flat on the slate. He pushed up the bandage from one eye, and copied the figure . . .
Presently Smith threw back the blanket and excitedly . . . produced the drawing . . .
Without this confession the parapsychologists might have today their prime case for ESP. The single example above shows how scientists can be easily deceived by simple means, having not even recorded in their reports such details as the handing over of the pencil and the stumbling on the rug since such small items seemed not to be important. As one can see, they are.
Black Magic
A form of magic performed for evil purposes, or in the view of religion, any magic that is not of divine origin, whether the intent is evil or not.
Lewis Spence, in his Encyclopaedia of Occultism, writes in reference to this subject in medieval Europe:
In Black Magic human perversity found the means of ministering to its most terrible demands and the possible attainment of its darkest imaginings. To gain limitless power over god, demon and man; for personal aggrandisement and glorification; to cheat, trick and mock; to gratify base appetites; to aid religious bigotry and jealousies; to satisfy public and private enmities; to further political intrigue; to encompass disease, calamity and death — these were the ends and aims of Black Magic and its followers.
Mr. Spence did not doubt that these “ends and aims” were attainable. However magic of any hue has not, of itself, in any way altered the history of the world or of any particle in it despite the worst or best intentions of the magi.
Black Mass
Supposed to be a blasphemous version of the Catholic Mass in which the naked body of a woman (preferably a virgin, as one might imagine) is used in place of an altar. Popularly believed to be performed by witches at a sabbat, this ceremony may well be another of the totally fictitious aspects of actual witchcraft.
Sophisticated Parisians of the seventeenth century toyed with the idea as a diversion. It is referred to by the Marquis de Sade (Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, 1740-1814) in his novel Justine and that very description may have given rise to the notion that it was an actual part of witchcraft.
Those fanatics who hunted down witches and hanged or burned them for imaginary crimes of course believed in the Black Mass. They added to the myth by inventing boiled babies, drinking blood in place of sacramental wine, and other improbable aspects. Today similar irrationalities are accepted in courts of law when evidence is given in cases involving Satanism.
Blackmore, Dr. Susan J.
(1951- ) A graduate of Oxford University, Dr. Blackmore earned a Ph.D. in parapsychology at Surrey University. Her work consisted of ESP experiments with Tarot cards, out-of-body experiences (OBEs), ganzfeld tests, and extensive work with children.
Blackmore became disillusioned with parapsychology when she obtained only negative results, sometimes in areas where other researchers had reported significant figures. She differed with some of her colleagues on their protocols, and her three books express some of those disagreements. They are Parapsychology and Out-of-the-Body Experiences (1978), Beyond the Body (1982) and The Adventures of a Parapsychologist (1986).
Dr. Blackmore is affiliated with many organizations in the field of parapsychology, including the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP).
Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna
(1831-1891) This woman was born Helena Von Hahn in the Ukraine. Like many psychics, HPB, as she was known to her disciples, claimed that as a child she had been given divine visions and had experienced magical gifts, being able to move objects by psychokinesis.
At seventeen, she was married to a forty-yea
r-old general named Nikifor Blavatsky, but left him after three months and went off to Constantinople. She retained the noble name. Later in her life, she claimed that for the next few years she visited every exotic place known, was initiated into mystical orders, and finally settled in Tibet, where she contacted the “mahatmas,” adepts who lived in caves and taught her the mysteries she was to subsequently teach. All these tales are highly doubtful.
What is known to be true is that she went from being a piano teacher to a circus bareback rider to a spirit medium, and she eventually was employed by the spirit medium Daniel Dunglas Home as an assistant, where she doubtless learned some of the tricks of the trade.
At age forty, while she was operating as a spirit medium in Cairo, where she had started her Société Spirite, a great commotion arose when a long cotton glove stuffed with cotton was discovered in the séance room, and HPB wisely departed hastily for Paris.
Two years later, in 1873, she moved to the United States and began performing séances for wealthy patrons there. In 1875, in partnership with Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, a lawyer and writer who dealt with spiritualistic claims, she founded the Theosophical Society.
Spirit medium Helena Petrovna Blavatsky with Colonel Henry Steel Olcott in 1888.
Theosophy became the passion and the profession of the woman who insisted upon being addressed as “Madame.” She claimed to bring messages from two “masters” or “mahatmas” named Koot Hoomi and Morya. These messages were often in the form of small bits of paper that floated down from the ceiling above her. She attracted many prominent persons to the movement by her performance of these effective diversions.
In India, HPB flourished as a cult figure for several years, until a housekeeper who had formerly worked as a magician's assistant exposed the tricks by which Blavatsky had been fooling her followers. Blavatsky blustered a great deal and threatened to sue, but instead chose to leave India, and never went back.
Next in England in 1885, her tricks were exposed by the Society for Psychical Research, when certain pieces of conjuring equipment were shown to be the means by which she produced the written messages from her mahatmas, and it was revealed that she had deceived a disciple by hiring an actor wearing a dummy bearded head and flowing costume to impersonate the mahatma Koot Hoomi. The exposure did little to shake the belief of the faithful of England, who have always been tolerant of those who would take advantage of them.
Madame Blavatsky wrote several mystical books, among them Isis Unveiled (1877), which was shown to have been copied from previous works of other authors, and The Secret Doctrine (1888). A basic part of the mythology given in these books is that mankind is passing through a series of seven “root races.” These are: Astrals (pure spirits), Hyperboreans (from a now-vanished continent), Lemurians (who interbred with animals and thus went bye-bye), Atlanteans (who had psychic powers and secret energy sources, but went under during a cataclysm), and the Race of Hope, the Aryans. This fifth group was seized upon by the Nazi theorists, along with the Rosicrucian ideas, as a basis for their racial superiority notions.
After Blavatsky's death in 1891 from Bright's disease, a disciple named Annie (Wood) Besant (1847/8-1933), a former militant atheist, took over Theosophy along with Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854-1934). The religion, over the ensuing years, split up into several factions, each with its own charismatic guru, and it has never been the same since.
Annie Besant, who took over Theosophy after Blavatsky's death.
Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the Nazi SS (Schutzstaffel, meaning “protection squadron”), was a devoted follower of the racial theories of Blavatsky and based the design of the SS on her teachings and on those of Aleister Crowley and the Templars, the band of 12th-century knights who protected the pilgrims of the crusades.
The parent group of the Theosophists is still a minor religious movement headquartered in Adyar, India, and its activities now concentrate on social welfare.
Blindfold Vision
This is a conjuring trick often done by mentalists. It consists of the performer being blindfolded — often with tape, opaque metal masks, and/or bandages — and then accomplishing various feats such as reading, writing, negotiating an obstacle course, or driving a vehicle, apparently without the use of sight. It has also been called Eyeless Vision, the name given it by Dr. Harlan Tarbell, a well-known writer on conjuring techniques.
The very effective trick has been taken up with great success by the psychics, who of course say that when they do it, it's not a trick.
Bluebeard
(Gilles de Rais, or de Retz, also de Laval, circa 1404-1440) A French baron, a marshal of France, and a wealthy landowner, de Rais married into an even wealthier family at age sixteen. He fought alongside Joan of Arc at the Battle of Orléans, then at age twenty-eight he suddenly retired from public life and began the study of alchemy with the intent of finding the philosopher's stone.
He soon gained the reputation of a sorcerer, taking into his service a number of rogues who promised him success in his search for untold wealth. He maintained an outward innocence and gentle attitude at the same time he was slaughtering children as sacrifices to the demons who he was told could satisfy his needs.
As more and more children went missing in the area, the evidence against him mounted, and he was finally arrested. At his trial in 1440 he confessed to the most heinous crimes imaginable, his confession being considerably facilitated by torture, of course. He was put to death by the Holy Inquisition for his crimes, one of the relatively few justified executions performed by this Holy Office. Because of his high position, de Rais was given the privilege of being strangled before he was burned. A nice touch.
He earned the name Bluebeard (Barbe Bleue) from his glossy black beard, and by that name he has come down through history as a character in children's stories.
Blue Book
A privately published, regularly updated directory of names and pertinent information about potential sitters, secretly subscribed to by spirit mediums who wish to have personal data with which to impress clients. Regional versions exist, and the source is carefully guarded. The data are submitted free or sold to the publishers by practicing mediums, who obtain it from each other and from important and wealthy clients.
Individual “spirit camps” or similar communities will often keep their own private lists, formerly on index cards, but now in computer form, of persons who have visited there. Former spirit medium and author Lamar Keene describes the process in his book The Psychic Mafia.
Bohemian
See Gypsy.
Book of Coming Forth by Day, the
(Pert Em Hru, also known as The Book of the Dead) From about four thousand years ago, the Egyptian document titled The Book of Coming Forth by Day was placed in the sarcophagus alongside the mummified body of an important person. This guide to the underworld, the text of which was often also drawn or inscribed on the tomb walls, was intended to instruct the ka (spirit) of the deceased in the proper protocol for facing the perils to be encountered after death.
In reality, it contained a long list of formulas that could be recited to ward off the penalties that might be incurred. It was a sort of Egyptian version of a Christian Indulgence, a magical system to defeat the intent of the gods or to placate them.
Before the problem of reading Egyptian hieroglyphics had been solved, a copy of this document on the original papyrus was purchased by the elders of the Mormon Church and was divinely interpreted by them to be a lost book of the Bible that established their religion as orthodox, a claim maintained even after it was clear that the book was no such thing. The explanation now offered by the church spokesmen is that there are really two translations of the book, one mundane and the other divine. To some people, this is not a convincing argument.
Book of the Dead, the
See Book of Coming Forth by Day, The.
Borley Rectory
Known as “the most haunted house in England,” this very substantial resid
ence of the parish rector, Reverend Henry Bull, was built in 1863. The first occupants of the house began reporting seeing the ghost of a nun, then a phantom coach and two black horses. Subsequent residents were frightened by strange whispering noises, creaks on the staircase, ringing bells, and a light that was periodically seen, from the outside, in the window of an empty upper room.
